Hellmouth Hospital

[Thor]

Hi All!

I was driving to gaming Friday and thinking about the ides that every scene should change the character. I don't know if I believe it or not, so I started this little game to help me think.

The game centers around a fairly normal television hospital, It could be the one from ER, House, or any other hospital where the doctors have nothing to do between life saving emergencies except make love to their beutiful collegues. the only difference is that this hospital was built on top of an Indian Burial Ground/Nuclear Wasted Deposit/ Military Research Facility/ whatever. The point is that the players are going to do three things all the time: romance their colleagues, Save Lives and fight monsters. Simple consite.

To play the game you need thre or more people, pencilsbecause information is going to change alot, some notecards or pieces of paper and some regular six sided dice.

The characters will have a stat each for Romance, Medicine and Combat. They will be rated by number of dice. One will be rated as one dice, another at Two Dice, and the third at Three dice.

The stat with one dice is your issue, the one you are bad at the and should have a reason as to why you are bad at it. If it is love it could be that you are super analytical, or it could be that you are shy or that your character is gay and hasn't come out of the closet yet. pick a reason that make sense to you. If it is combat, it could be your hippocratic oath will not allow you to hurt others even if they are monsters, or cowardice, or again, anything that works. Similarly if it is medicine you could be an intern or a nurse ant that explains your inability to save the super tough cases that come your way. but it could be a drinking problem, or that you only went into medicine because everyone in your family was a doctor.

Your two dice skill represents your goal. That thing you want to become. Think of a reason you want to be a better whatever the dice represent and who you are jealous of for being better at it than you. It can be another player or an NPC the person doesn't eben have to be better than your character only that your character believe thyat they are not as good. That character will be called a relationship and scenes where that charater is involved will contribute an extra dice even if the scene isn't about your two dice stat.

The three dice stat represents your best ability and is tied to what you are afraid of. So if your character has three dice in romance they are afraid of loosing that which they love, if it is combat they are afraid of dieing, and if it's medicine they are afraid of loosing patients.

Scenes rotate around the table with each player deciding what their scene will be start as. The player to their left rolls to see what intrudes on the scene. 1-2 romance, 3-4 medicine, 5-6 monster. The scene is then played out till a conflict is set then roll decide the outcome, play out the conflict and pass the dice. If the roll is successful the player adds something pertinant to their character sheet. if the conflict fails the person to their left writes the change.  The changes should deal with the conflict that occured, and can act as a bonus dice in further conflicts.

The problem I am having with this is how to end the game. Short of playing till you all fall asleep what are the conditions that signal the end of the episode?

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

The problem I am having with this is how to end the game. Short of playing till you all fall asleep what are the conditions that signal the end of the episode?

The Endgame Conditions of your game should be:  One of the characters reaches his Goal, is consumed by his Fear, or overcomes his Issue.

Now all you have to do is create mechanics that do these three things!  In order to do that, it would be good to know what a play session might look like.  You've told us a little bit about what the characters do, but not why.  So why are they there?  What do the characters want?

You haven't told us much about the players in your game.  What do the players do?  What makes the game fun for them?  How are narration and credibility distributed?

These are mainly guiding questions, but I would like to see your answers to some of them.  Are they helping?

Peace,

-Troy

[contracycle]

Alternately if episode = session, then a session could be a shift with a simple wrap up, in that the characters go home.  The resolution of the fear, goal or Issue presents a couple of problems if this is a question about time.

Otherwise if episode = story or similar, then I would agree that the resolution of one of those three is appropriate, but then the question arises as to whom this applies.  The first character to do so, or dos eveyone keep playing until they all do?

Anyway it looks interesting.  If you made the problem generation more specific and less generic, it could even have a mission-like structure with the shift idea above, in that you could have a set of problems appropriate to "the night the busload of orphans crashed into a pool ectoplasm", and leave player action to generate the character descriptions you are after.

[Thor]

Thanks Troy,

This was cross posted with your second comment, I will try to answer both together.

Session = Episode, but with a one night gets you to some sort of closure feel.

You are right of course, the finish conditions need to be about the characters hopes or fears for that episode. Either dealing with your fear, reaching your goal or succeding at your weakness. I haven't decided yet how you set those goals, but you are right.

Play should be something like a cross between ER crossed with Buffy the vampire slayer directed by Robert Altman and playing like My Life with Master. I have been into the idea of multiple parallel storylines where the chance to echo or counterpoint another storyline exists. The players would go into a scene planning for something and something else would happen, then as an outcome they are changed. Hopefully I can craft a way to get people to break scenes on action rather than completion; but regardless there will be a twist every other scene or so where you start out asking out  the new nurse and wind up fighting monsters to save her. So you as a player set a scene where you are trying to make a relationship with this NPC there is a one third chance that that is what the scene is going to be about and a two thirds chance that the scene is going to turn into something else.

Creating the disturbances will need more structure (as you pointed out) so that the distractions work with the characters story not against it. And in the end it might take the human touch to make the fighting monsters> falling in love scene work toward a story. 

I chose the setting for a reason.I wanted really short scenes where the player was forced to improvise around changing circumstances. If I am right and you play the game enough times the first few will be complete laugh riots, then as the idea of parallel stories takes hold it will get very sureal and then dip into and out of something more real, where the issues you like are played the way you like to play.  

I will try to sit down tonight and try to do a power 19 for the game.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Let me ask real fast, is there a GM for this game?

Peace,

-Troy

[Thor]

Not at this point.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

Not at this point.

I look forward to reading your Power 19, but at this point let me make an observation.  In my admittedly limited experience, a GMless game works best when the players or characters are either competing with each other or collaborating to tell a story.  In your game, I see a lot of emphasis on opposition but not much on competition or collaboration.  In a game like this, the GM seems like the perfect source (IMHO) for the opposition, not the other palyers. 

Let me try to better explain what I mean.  The players all have vested interests in seeing their own character succeed.  But the success or failure of each individual's character does not seem to have any affect on the rest of the group.  So why would they care one way or the other?  Without a competitive or collaberative spirit in the game, portraying opposition by the other players would take away their focus on their own characters- which seems like the point of play so far.  Thus a GM, who has no character, is a better choice to play the opposition, IMO.  He can totally focus on just creating and portraying the opposition.  His object in play is solely to make the game better for everyone else.

Did that make any sense?  If not, I'll be happy to try to elaborate further.

Peace,

-Troy

[Thor]

I am looking for more an "I am gonna make you awsome" vibe. One of the aspects I am liking about this GMlessness is that we-at-the-table don't need to all play the same game as it were. But if you are the player to my left you are playing my game for the delight of the rest of us and I am similarly playing the game of the person to the right of me.

We wind up with N-different, possibly interlocking storie; the coolness of which is that they echo and parallel each other. So, even though you are not an official player in the game to my right, you can say,"That character is having this kind of difficulty in love and My character is having the same kind of difficulty in medicine. That's cool!"
If we are having troupe play we are telling one story together. That would not be the end of the world, but it is not the feature that I am looking for. Similarly if we are competeing, we are telling one story as well; the story of the competition. In this we have the potential for the story of how Tracy concured her fear and Kelly gave in to his. This can be a story where Tracy and Kelly only meet metaphoricly at the table.

I realise that this puts a burden on each player to be thinking in two or more different storylines at a time, but this also makes it so that they are active in scenes on a regular basis. this may turnout to be a dead end but I am willing to take that chance.

[Yakk]

This is an attempt to get a feel of episodic fiction.

So how about a first stage where you set the overall plot of the episode?

Ie, an episode might consist of a total of, say, 21 events.  These are pre-rolled in chunks of three and placed onto a timeline.  The climax events, and falling action, are pre-mapped on the timeline.

Each player can either roll 1d6 and take the nth-from-the-start scene, or take the scene after their last position on the timeline.  Once you do a scene, it is crossed off.  If your "next" scene is crossed off, you have to roll.  On your first turn, you have to roll.

This creates some chunking to the scenes (ie, multiple monster scenes in a row), some ability to predict what will happen next, and foreknowledge about what the climax events will be.

As you approach the climax, things build somehow.  As the type of events in the climax are somehow predetermined, characters can even do foreshadowing.

[Troy_Costisick]

Heya,

this may turnout to be a dead end but I am willing to take that chance.

I fnd that to be an incredibly interesting statement.  Can you elaborate on what you meant here?

Peace,

-Troy

[Thor]

I want to try playing where one style or tone is not the mode but to show that multiple styles of play are compatible. I am not sure that is true but want to try tll I prove it cannot be done.

That said here is the first thoughts on a power 19

1.) What is your game about?**

Life intruding on whatever it is we are trying to do with our lives. At it's most perfect the character should change without changing what they do. It was specifically designed to answer the question "What happens if every scene changes the character?"

2.) What do the characters do?**

They fight monsters, save patients and love thier coworkers while their lives get turned upside down; and change because of these interactions

3.) What do the players (including the GM if there is one) do?**

They set up scenes for their characters, which other players run and provide distraction from. They improvise those scenes with the other players and determine fallout that is appropriate to the scene.

4.) How does your setting (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?

The TV Hospital provides a great enclosed world most people already have an idea of. It doesn't need to be mapped. It has a sterility(sorry) that reduces outside distractions or focuses the inside ones.

5.) How does the Character Creation of your game reinforce what your game is about?

There are three stats that cover the three things the character can do. Character creation is bland so that your characters growth is from the fallout of conflicts stands out. However the goals and fears which your character will have are based on picking the stats you did.

6.) What types of behaviors/styles of play does your game reward (and punish if necessary)?

The game is designed to reward playing to the preferences of the others at the table and having your own preferences played to in your turn. If you are the left hand you are responding to the game the player on your right is trying to play. At this point I don't know if it rewards that or just doesn't discourage it.

7.) How are behaviors and styles of play rewarded or punished in your game?

see above.

8.) How are the responsibilities of narration and credibility divided in your game?

Player sets scene, Left Hand intrudes and controls NPCs. Player controls narration, including outcome of the conflict. player chooses fallout in won conflicts, Left Hand decides fallout in lost conflicts

9.) What does your game do to command the players' attention, engagement, and participation? (i.e. What does the game do to make them care?)

Gives player control over what the scenes are about and can control the level of humor, dispare, pathos, etc that is in their story. All stories can be different and still play as a cohesive game.

10.) What are the resolution mechanics of your game like?

Roll a number of D6s equal to stat + bonuses with bonuses for relationships and clever description. Matching dice are successes. Multiple matches can be banked for later.

11.) How do the resolution mechanics reinforce what your game is about?

It gets us to the fallout which is what we are looking at. It affords some thinking about what the character believes or is attached to.

12.) Do characters in your game advance? If so, how?

After every scene some fact is writen or changed on the character sheet. These will in turn affect what the character can do later in the game. Between sessions the player can swap any two of the stats and define new goals, fears, bad habits for the next game.

13.) How does the character advancement (or lack thereof) reinforce what your game is about?

The characters are defined by the relationships and the facts that acrue durring play. and help us to determine what emergent properties will come from such play.

Also devalues the advancement allowing play to be about other things. like seeing the patterns in the stories.

14.) What sort of product or effect do you want your game to produce in or for the players?

The first effect would be the understanding of the principle of this third type of play. I have been thinking about this type of game on and off since last summer and can see many aspectsof it in film and movies but not in play.

Second would be an understanding of the scene/Change model

Third would be an understanding that My game can be dark and self depricating and yours can be fun and frivolus at the same time.

15.) What areas of your game receive extra attention and color? Why?

The game is almost color free at the moment. I have not even defined the monsters.

16.) Which part of your game are you most excited about or interested in? Why?

I want to understand the idea of forcing a change every scene and seeing how that makes or breaks understanding of both stakes and character

17.) Where does your game take the players that other games can't, don't, or won't?

Parallel play (which is a term I don't like since two year olds outgrow it) and hopefully when actually played some future version will allow for tighter integration of all of the characters while still affording the same type of play.

18.) What are your publishing goals for your game?

I want to work on a game in a public forum because working on them in private was not fun and was not getting me anywhere.

19.) Who is your target audience?

Me and you apparently

[sean2099]

I can't help but ask if you watched Kingdom Hospital or not.  If you haven't, it was a mini-series with Stephen King at the helm. (You can find the DVDs, at least I can at my local video store.) It sounds so close to what you are trying to do.  If you have, there is nothing wrong with that and sounds like a potentially interesting game.  Again, like Troy, I will be one willing to read the Power 19

Sean

[Thor]

Sean -  I only watched the first two epsodes. I suppose there would be a similar vibe. I was thinking more of ER.

Troy - To give a more thoughtful answer to your question about the dead end. I really think that play of this sort is possible. There are lots of games where players are running in different directions. I haven't played Polaris but it seems the most radical in this reguard. My life with master is certainly an inspiration in that what sort of story you are telling is yours and is only tangential to the others. I am asking each of the players to step up and act as GM for one other character with support from all of the others. It's not that the characters can't be in each others scenes, but when they do they take a back seat.

I am pretty flippant about games in general, this one came more out of the blue than most, and I decided to try developing in public.

New question that occured to me durring the power 19, I am using a single uncontested roll for the conflict resolution is that going to be fulfilling enough? It seems to work in MLWM, but feels funny in the "I am doing surgery and the monster attacks can he stop me from completing it successfully and what does that mean to my character" way. at thee same time I certainly don't want this to be a tactical game.

We start with the intended set up

My character is doing surgery on the guy that saved him from the monster that ate Jessie. I wanted an easy roll because the last couple have gone against me. I have Ed saved my life and Loves Jessie as relationships, this and my Medicine of 3 will give me 5 dice to roll. That will almost certainly give me a success and quite possibly a hero point type thing to use later. The Left hand rolls and it is another monster attack. My monster fighting is 2 so it is my goal stat and it is my goal "to rid the hospital of monsters so I can work" the conflict is can I defeat the monsters so that I can save ed's life.

It is starting to feel like two rolls to me maybe you can set them up and then through narration move some of the dice around.

So we have

Med - 3
Ed  saved my life - 1

Fight - 2
That Monster ate Jessie - 1
Rid the hospital of monsters - 1

roll the monster attack first.  get 2,3,4,6 no match roll in one of the me dice and get a 2 so I have beaten the monster.

That leaves 3 dice for the surgury. get 1,1,4 success.

does that seem like enough?

[Jarx]

You should end the episode when the klimax is at the highest point.